How to declutter in 15 Minutes a Day
Clutter. It creeps into your home slow and sometimes you don’t even notice, until one day you look around and all you see is clutter. You step back and ask yourself, “Where did all this clutter come from?” If your home is like our home, clutter comes from many places – kids, mail, school, and just everywhere. But busy moms don’t have time to declutter all day. Start with these decluttering tips to declutter your home in 15 minutes a day with this 30-Day Declutter challenge to get the clutter out of your home and be clutter-free again.
Note: This post includes affiliate links. I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Read my disclosure policy here.
Clutter happens fast. You blink your eyes and the kitchen counter is covered (right?). If you don’t constantly remind your children to put away their shoes and toys, the shoes and toys will be scattered all over your home. I understand, despite our best efforts, clutter just happens. You need a plan to control the clutter.
What causes home clutter?
Before we start decluttering, let’s recognize where the clutter is coming from. If we know where the clutter starts, in the future we should be able to control it and stop it before it becomes out of control. The 4 main sources of clutter you are likely to find in your home are:
- Kid clutter – this clutter can be massive. It includes toys (ones they play with and ones they don’t), clothes and shoes (misplaced, outgrown, and just too many), blankets, bags, books, and general “kid stuff”.
- Paper clutter – this clutter includes mail (bills, junk mail, magazines, etc…), artwork by your children and papers from school, newspapers, unread magazines.
- Misplaced clutter – this clutter includes shoes in the middle of the living room (my pet peeve), socks everywhere, scattered toys, clean laundry you didn’t put away and anything that is out of place.
- Things we don’t use – clothes and shoes we don’t wear, toys our children have outgrown, duplicated items.
As you can see, it’s easy for our homes to become cluttered quickly. Keeping our homes decluttered takes effort and a plan!
You might also like: 5o Home Organization Ideas for Busy Moms
Why Declutter?
Less Clutter = Less Stress
When you have less clutter, you will also have less stress in your life. When you have clutter it’s harder to find the items and things you need. I don’t know about you, but I always find out something is lost 30 seconds before it’s time to leave for school (which causes me stress while I try to find it).
If you are constantly reducing clutter and keeping everything in its place, you will be able to easily find the things you need when you need them (stress-free).
Too Much Clutter Will Make You Feel Overwhelmed
Maybe it’s just me, but I start to feel overwhelmed (and stressed) when there is too much “stuff” laying around my house. Clutter becomes a distraction. Clutter makes me feel like everything is closing in on me. What about you? How does clutter make you feel?
Recommended for you: How to Keep Your Home Clean in 10 Minutes a Day
How to start decluttering
The hardest part of decluttering is deciding where to start decluttering. I understand. I have kept baby clothes my kids can’t wear from 10 years ago because it was a memory or toys from the first trip to Disney. I can come up with crazy reasons to keep things that no one needs any longer.
To help start the decluttering process, I have 3 easy to follow rules to make your decluttering simple:
- Accept you cannot keep everything and you have to let things that are not used or that are no longer useful to you go.
- If you don’t use it, get rid of it (i.e. you have not used in 6 months or 12 months), it’s time for it to leave your house. (I do make an exception with clothes for myself as weight/sizes can vary, but if you don’t like the clothes don’t keep them).
- Everything has one of 4 possible outcomes: keep it, recycle it, toss it (it’s broken or unusable) and donate it. As you go through each room and each space, decide quickly which category each item belongs in. Put them in the right place and move to the next thing.
Note: some of you might want to sell items and that’s great too if you have time. But sometimes creating a pile to sell just takes too much of your time and you just have another pile of clutter to deal with.
Decluttering is a process. Most likely you will not remove all the clutter the first time you go through your home. But you will get some big items. Then as you look around, you will start to think, this would be better without … and it’s easier to declutter and remove more items.
If you need help with items to start decluttering, check out this list of 75 items you can declutter now.
30-Day Declutter Challenge
If you are ready to get control of the clutter and keep your home clutter-free, let’s start with a simple 15-minute a day declutter challenge. This plan will not completely declutter your home, but it will help you start removing the clutter.
This challenge has 30 tasks (one for each day) that you can complete in about 15 minutes each day. It’s designed so you can start anytime and you can re-do each task each month (some will need to be repeated monthly like recycling old magazines and mail, others you might only do once every season like clean up the garage).
Keep your pretty printable calendar on your refrigerator or someplace to remind you to do each task each day.
Start your declutter challenge by downloading your FREE Declutter challenge calendar with 30 decluttering tasks you can complete in 15 minutes each day.
If you want a more detailed declutter and organization plan, the Organize Your Life page has detailed declutter and organization plans for your home and life.
Living clutter-free is an on-going job. We can start the clean-up process with this 30-day declutter challenge. Set 15 minutes every day and focus on each declutter task. You will be surprised and happy with the results at the end of 30 days. It may be the start of your clutter-free life….
Declutter your home with the Conquer Your Clutter Binder.
Are you looking for a simple plan to help you declutter your home?
The Conquer your Clutter is a decluttering guide that will help you end your decluttering paralysis and clear the clutter from your home.
Here’s what’s included:
- Easy Decluttering tips to get you started on your decluttering journey
- It will take you from I want to declutter to committing to the process and making it happen
- Steps to visualizing your decluttered home to get your motivated
- Checklists for places to sell items
- Checklists for places to donate items
- A quick start “to-do” list
- Organization ideas
- Room by room decluttering checklists and plans
- And more…
Grab your copy of the Conquer your Clutter Binder today.
Your turn…
What are your biggest clutter challenges? How do you keep your home clutter-free?
PIN IT FOR LATER:
We love a good DEClutter Challenge!
Hi Jill, it’s always fun to get rid of clutter right?
We’re in the middle of a massive decluttering project. this should be really helpful.
Hi Emily, we have been decluttering this year too. If you do a deep decluttering project, it can take time.
I absolutely agree… I’ve been trying to tackle the attic for couple of years, and I always find an excuse to put it off….
Got to get to it!
Joyful Savings recently posted: Did You Ever Think Of Using Tuna Cans For This?
Hi Jacky, oh the attic! That’s a challenge all it’s own. Down here in Florida the only time it’s not too hot in the attic is the middle of winter – January or February.